The power of an audience

This message harkens back to the original idea for this blog: things that endure.

An audience MUST endure in these troubled times. I watch late tv hosts struggling to keep their shows funny, smart and entertaining from their homes sans audience, and, honestly, they are indeed... struggling.

Stephen Colbert admitted to Conan O'Brien that the kind of work he does depends on an audience.

The kind of work that I do, teaching a foreign language, also requires "an audience." I play back the recording from a recent Zoom session, and I notice how much I am contorting my face in order to elicit the interest of my students, when the rest of my body cannot be used (yes, I could stand full body in front of the computer, wear a mike, go high tech, but it would require a great deal of effort).

At least, I have an audience. I can't imagine recording lectures from my study, with a cat, maybe, sleeping near me, providing a sign of life. At least I am still in front of students, as they say these days, "synchronously."

A friend posted on his FB page a photograph of his wife taking a photograph of the full moon. I liked the photo so much, that I asked him if he could send it to me so that I could print it and put it on my wall. He first sent me a photo that did not have his wife in it. It wasn't the same photograph. It felt empty. The presence of the person -- the audience -- made all the difference. I hesitated about asking him again, but we are living in strange times, so, if there ever was a time to "share" it would be this one. He did send me the photograph with his wife in the end. The one with the audience.

I am fortunate in these unfortunate times (bad pun, I know) to have students with whom I share a moment of learning. To paraphrase the great Woody Guthrie, literally from London to Berkeley, and from Mississauga (Ontario) to Mexico City, we meet up four times a week to learn the intricacies of French grammar. 

Thank you, young audience, for existing and giving me a reason to raise an imaginary mug, la tasse, in an effort to pass it virtually, to another student, who then must replace the noun with a pronoun (la). The best I can hope for is that a.  they understood and b. I managed to be somewhat entertaining.

Traveling in time with objects

Memento Mori

In these troubled times when we cannot travel

our objects

that have traveled with us

can trigger pleasant memories

of other places in better times.

The backpack for instance

that traversed the Alps 

from Lyon to Milan to Rome to Milan to Lyon again.

The denim culottes

(purchased on eBay,

signifying more stories

that their current owner

will never know)

have walked up to Edinburgh castle

on one of the shortest days of the year.

The leather jacket

purchased with a rip in the back

was reserved for the L train to DeKalb Avenue.

Proust said it best:

When we can't travel in space,

With the aid of memory

We can travel in time,

And, lord knows,

that trip can unfold a richness to the senses

that the original trip never achieved. 

    

Trapped?

The little office is now a place to work, alone, in a college building among college buildings where janitors shuffle around emptying garbage cans, polishing door handles, keeping things as clean as they can. 

I go to this little office mainly to use the wifi. We all have to Zoom these days, teach "remotely" as they say, and it gets me out of the house. Six miles of distance between home, where people also have to use the (low speed)  wifi, and high speed internet with no one around. 

The clothes I wear are old. Now that shopping is out of the question, I "shop" inside my own closet. The pop of fuchsia announces spring, and the grey sweater reminds me that I must be careful to dress warmly in these Northern New England regions where snow remains in the forecast until early May.

Why is shopping out of the question? Why did I write that? Because this is a moment when we are being forced to face who we are with what we are not able or allowed to do. We are not able to go shopping, which makes me face the importance of that "ritual" (it is a modern day ritual in so far as we live in consumer driven culture, God is inside the store, or maybe just a simple spirit). Since I cannot go into the stores, look at the colors, feel the fabrics, stand in front of a mirror with a dress in front of me, then I will go shopping inside my own closet, stand in front of my own mirror, and try to find the little spirit at home. 

We are learning, at last, come on people, didn't you read Barthes, Bourdieu, Baudrillard, or, simply, Karl Marx, that we are a fragile society that depends on the emptiness of investments, meaning the reassurance that the future will always be better -- not even as good as but better  -- than the present. We have been living on a bet. We are currently, suddenly, losing the bet. We must face what we have, and, sadly, for so many, what they don't have, which is now a job, a paycheck, a way to buy food. (For the moment, I am one of the lucky ones, I am not facing that harsh reality). 

Meanwhile, back in the little office, wires are all over the place. We live in a wired world, now more than ever. Maybe I should face the clutter rather than stare out the window. Maybe I am trying to stay happy rather than face the mess.